Research paper on role of social media in recruitment,

Use of internet-mediated and social media methods to recruit health professionals to research studies is relatively new [ 1019 ]. Global Trends — and keep an eye out for an upcoming webinar on social media, we have one planned! Impact of participation incentives for physicians to boost response rates have been not been shown to be effective amongst GPs [ 1253438 ] and were therefore not used in this study. Ethical considerations Ethical approval for the study was gained from Keele University ethical review panel. However, despite its growing popularity as a method of online research, most students still say they prefer to communicate with institutions via email rather than on social media.

The same challenge may occur in paper-based surveys, however with paper-based studies people decide to either complete it or not to respond at all, resulting in fewer partially completed surveys. This was hypothesised by the study team to have greater credibility and impact as a recruitment strategy and has the advantage of being cost-free.

These emails represent multi-modal recruitment snowballing in action; an occurrence that itself generates momentum in sharing a research invitation with further, potentially untapped pockets of the target population. A significant obstacle for this study was in defining a strategy to attract and recruit an unknown population.

However, in the case of an unknown population, it is more difficult to assess the risk of bias. However since it is traditionally difficult to achieve high response rates amongst physicians [ 131539 ], further research is indicated to improve participation and response rates amongst clinicians in research surveys, including the potential for using a multi-modal recruitment strategy in conjunction with commercially available databases of clinicians, accepting the cost implications of such an approach.

Whilst the Google Analytics data provided insight into how each of the social media platforms and professional websites on which an advert was placed performed, one and the same web link was used to allow brown v board of education thesis to the survey website.

What Is the Role of Social Media in Student Recruitment? - QS

No such responses were found, indicating that on balance, the data is likely to be legitimate, given the expected completion time of 15 minutes. Conclusions Using a multi-modal traditional and Internet-mediated recruitment strategy was successful in recruiting a professionally diverse international sample of health and research professionals with an interest in clinical management of shoulder pain.

Future online surveys should either i include a question to assess how participants heard about and accessed the survey or ii use specific variations of the study web address for each mode of recruitment and access. However, it is accepted that individuals, societies or groups may have been missed as the strategy relied on individuals including their specific professional interests and social media biography.

The recruitment strategy was considered successful as it exceeded the aim of recruiting a multi-disciplinary and international sample of participants with complete data within the defined recruitment period, with complete responses received.

Respondent demographics Table 6 indicate that the multi-modal recruitment strategy enabled recruitment of a sample from a large number of countries, professional disciplines, healthcare settings and ranging experience.

Global Trends — and keep an eye out for an upcoming webinar on social media, we have one planned! This highlights the necessity for future researchers to ensure that research surveys are both compatible and formatted appropriately to operate on multiple media simultaneously. Having a lively social media presence can be a good way to present an institution as open, welcoming and up to date, with a strong community.

Also, future researchers could consider stratifying recruitment methods over time, using one method alone for a defined period before moving on to the next. Although the online survey was provided exclusively in English, the recruitment strategy included a number of steps intended to specifically include and invite international participation.

Followerwonk identified this individual as a key recruitment target and this single tweet sent from the researchers account reached over individuals internationally with an interest in shoulder pain, a reach that would have been almost impossible relying on just the professional network of research paper on role of social media in recruitment href="http://phantomphan.net/4362-sample-thesis-for-payroll-system.php">sample thesis for payroll system study team and prior to the advent of social media.

These included contacts with relevant professional bodies, societies and organisations across the world, and tweets translated by native speakers into Spanish, French and Italian.

Universities extending the role of social media in student recruitment

Impact of participation incentives for physicians to boost response rates have been not been shown to be effective amongst GPs [ 1253438 ] and were therefore not used in this study. Therefore, it was not possible to see how the different recruitment routes compared in terms of achieving survey participation.

At the same time, our research has shown that students are keen to get information from a variety of sources in order to feel more confident that they have a comprehensive understanding of the universities they are applying to. Furthermore, the observation that nine individuals shared a tweet sent by the researcher via email indicates that the target population do indeed use multiple forms of communication including social media to collate and share information with peers.

Whilst acknowledging limitations of the method, this approach offers a pragmatic, easy to use strategy that can be used in future studies.

Sign up to our newsletter

This may have helped to increase the response rate as well as generate a powerful snowballing recruitment effect amongst other professionals who were unknown to the study team or perhaps not included in the international professional societies targeted. This indicates that the multi-modal research strategy delivered on its potential to how to respond to salary requirements in cover letter engage and direct an unknown, professionally diverse and geographically spread target population to an online survey.

Specific details pertinent to the acquisition of ethical approval for the study included anonymity and security of the data provided. Of ucl thesis database tweet views, the internet address link was accessed in 0. Whilst this would have the disadvantage of potentially limiting the accumulation of online presence and visibility during a defined period, it would allow researchers to quantify how many respondents came from each method and whether different recruitment methods attract respondents with different characteristics.

Data from this study shows that the survey website was accessed times, with respondents submitting some data but complete data only being received from individuals.

Social networks can allow prospective students to get a feel for daily life and connect directly with peers. One example from this study is the tweet sent to a physiotherapist with a clinical interest in shoulder pain, whose Twitter account had over 30, followers. Steps taken to address this potential bias included specifically identifying and targeting national and international professional interest groups for non-physiotherapists as outlined in Table 3 and targeting recruitment flyers to GPs with a special interest in musculoskeletal conditions and shoulder and upper limb orthopaedic surgeons and rheumatologists known to the study team.

Data from this study shows that the survey website was accessed times, with respondents submitting some data but complete data only being received from individuals. Tweets were shared in total times via retweets, likes and on 9 instances via email.

The difficulty with response rate calculation in this context lies in the lack of methodology for research paper on role of social media in recruitment what happens to research invitations once they are placed online. Precise reasons for providing incomplete data are not clear, but since the survey was fielded only in English individuals who accessed the survey but were not fluent in the English language may have opted to leave the survey without providing complete data.

Research conducted by QS and presented in our Student Online: It cannot be known how many other such snowballs were generated via the multi-modal approaches taken to recruitment in this survey, but this observation evidences the connectedness of everyday health and research professionals and also their willingness to participate in social sharing of research recruitment invitations.

This targeted approach also has the advantage of being specifically targeted to individuals likely to meet survey inclusion criteria.

What Is the Role of Social Media in Student Recruitment?

So rather than throwing everything into social media, it could be more effective to focus on ensuring email responses are speedy and relevant. Although the multi-modal approach was not empirically compared to traditional recruitment methods, the recruitment of an international sample of clinicians to the survey was possible with minimal financial and time cost Table 4.

You can find out more in our recent report, Student Online: Ethical considerations Ethical approval for the study was gained from Keele How to make a cover letter for school ethical review panel.

Limited scope for international business plan bar restaurant gratuit has been cited in the past as a weakness of web surveys [ 81012 ].

Respondent anonymity and the physical distance from the researcher may be a factor as individuals are less likely to feel an obligation to the researcher to complete the survey. Although it was possible to retake the survey, all data were screened for total completion times less than five minutes.

A multi-modal survey recruitment proforma has been developed to assist future researchers achieve the potential offered by these low-cost recruitment methods Table 7.

For example, it may be possible that some social media platforms generated lower traffic to the survey than others but were more successful in generating complete versus incomplete survey data. Response rate is difficult, if not impossible, to calculate as recruitment happened in person, via postal invitation, via email and online using planned internet-mediated approaches.

Despite the large proportion of incomplete data, the demographic information provided indicated that respondents who provided complete data genealogical research paper largely similar to those providing incomplete data, and representative of the target population. A criticism of using social media as a recruitment tool for research studies is that respondents recruited via social media tend to be younger than those from more traditional recruitment methods [ 717 ].

Use of a web survey over a paper survey in this study facilitated immediate receipt of responses to a secure database and also allowed respondents to participate in the survey using the electronic medium of their choice desk-top computer, mobile phone or tablet. Universities extending the role of social media in student recruitment While our research has shown that there is a definite growing trend of universities extending their social media presence — with prospective students increasingly expecting to access information and communicate this way — the picture is not entirely clear-cut.

A further challenge for the use of internet-mediated research in general is gaining complete data. A common concern about the use of web-based surveys is that respondents are anonymous and that the authenticity of data often cannot be confirmed [ 810121728 — 30 ].

These steps would enable analysis of the impact of each recruitment method on generation of: However, using a multi-modal internet-mediated recruitment strategy, this study obtained response data from 31 different countries over a three-month period. Researchers can therefore consider using a multi-modal research strategy to recruit health professionals to future online studies.

Data was stored on the physically and electronically secure, restricted access Keele University server, which is routinely backed up and which was accessible only by the study team. Global Trends report, shows that a growing number of prospective students are using social media to research universities.

The true value of social media in student recruitment lies its ability to provide students an alternative source of information. However, data on number of years experience was collected and shows that respondents who provided complete data had more years of clinical experience on average mean Discussion Main findings We have provided a research paper on role of social media in recruitment description of a multi-modal international recruitment strategy for an online survey involving a range of health professionals and researchers interested in the management of patients with shoulder pain.

In spite of advertising the study in other languages, the survey was conducted exclusively in English due to known issues with translation and loss of culturally imbued meaning [ 1036 ], and several recruitment approaches specifically targeted organisations Table 3 or potential participants e.

Each tweet received on average views.

Strengths of the multi-modal strategy The main strengths of the multi-modal strategy used were that barriers of geographical boundaries and international timelines were minimised, with participants successfully recruited across international borders and professional backgrounds Table 6.

However, despite its growing popularity as a method of online research, most students still say they prefer to communicate with institutions via email rather than on social media. Weaknesses of the multi-modal strategy Recruitment, retention and representativeness are as much a challenge in an internet-mediated research study as in any other research.

In comparison, this study used only cost-free posts on social media pages to stimulate peer-led, socially shared, snowballing methods amongst clinical and research colleagues such as those outlined. Issues surrounding use of a web survey and a multi-modal and Internet-mediated recruitment strategy were considered, especially the use of social media to contact potential respondents.

The Twitter metrics showed how often each tweet was shared and on certain websites PhysioSpot and Chartered Society of Physiotherapy websites how often the webpage containing the recruitment invitation was shared.

However, this study did not include a data capture method that could inform the researchers about the exact access route to the survey taken by each individual responder, making it impossible to gain insight into the access to completion rates across different recruitment or social media routes.

There is an unavoidable degree of self-selection bias in any survey, where certain individuals are more likely to respond to surveys than others [ 1735 ]. Analytic data from Twitter and some of the professional Internet websites indicated that it is relatively easy to encourage potential respondents to click on the survey web address.

Use of internet-mediated and social media methods to recruit health professionals to research studies is relatively new [ 1019 ].